Free Julio!

Here is some recent information about the ongoing situation in Itoiz:

Julio Villanueva, member of the group Solidari@s con Itoiz, was arrested on August 17th in Iruñea-Pamplona. He was arrested by the local police ant imprisoned next morning.

Villanueva is one of the eight activists that in April 1996 stopped the construction works of Itoiz dam by cutting the cables on the concrete transporter. The eight solidarios were sentenced to 4 years and 10 months in prison for the sabotage. Two of them have already served the jail sentences passed on them. So Villanueva is the third member of Solidar@s con Itoiz imprisoned for the direct action against Itoiz reservoir. He's been until now in clandestinity like the rest of the remaining six, something which we can consider a huge punishment too.

Support actions

On August 18th about one hundred people gathered outside the prison of Pamplona-Iruñ ea to protest against the imprisonment of Julio Villanueva. Two days later another gathering of support for Julio took place in front of the jail. Solidari@s con Itoiz urges citizens to join another protest to demand freedom for Julio next Monday, August 27th, at 7 pm in the same place.

You can also support Julio by sending him messages:
Julio Villanueva
Prisión de Pamplona-Iruñea
Calle San Roque s/n
Apdo. 250
31071 PAMPLONA-IRUÑEA


More earthquakes caused by Itoiz reservoir water storage

Earthquakes caused by the Itoiz reservoir water storage have not ceased in last months. In fact, they have increased in number (1.200 earthquakes since summer 2004, when they started filling up the reservoir) and in the same way they are increasing the danger of an imminent catastrophe at Itoiz. As the earthquake map shows, more and more seismic events are having epicenter in the very same Itoiz reservoir, which increases seriously the risk of landslides into the reservoir, endangering thousands of people's lives. More details available at: www.itoizstop. org

Read and spread this message!
FREDOM FOR JULIO!!! STOP THE DAMS!!!
Solidari@s con Itoiz

Sindominio.net/ sositoz
sositoiz@sindominio .net

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Saving Itoiz

And this is why sometimes is hard to support international institutions that are supposed to be there to ensure that no country (civilized countries they called them) goes around violating human rights and civil liberties.

The construction of the Itoiz reservoir will devastate the enviroment of the area and swamp a series of towns deep in the heart of a mainly Basque area in Nafarroa (Navarre), those towns have been there for hundreds of years and many of then count with building and structures that are considered humankind's heritage, yet the Spanish government insists on building a damn that will bring little or no improvement to the area.

And then the Strasbourg's Court judges decide that no human rights are being violated admitting that they do not know what drives the Spanish government decisions, ahem, that is why the case went to court in the first place you morons.

Here you have the note at Berria English:

Itoiz Committee regards judgement as “scandalous”, and lodges appeal

The lawyer Beaumont has denounced the use of “false or erroneous arguments” by Strasbourg

Edurne Elizondo – IRUÑEA (Pamplona)

The Itoiz Coordinating Committee regards the verdict on the reservoir handed down on Tuesday by the European Court of Human Rights as “scandalous” and has announced its intention to lodge an appeal against it with the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg Court.

In a press conference held yesterday Jose Luis Beaumont, the Coordinating Committee’s lawyer, stressed: “If the Spanish Government had good advisers, it would know that there are many possibilities of the latest verdict being quashed, because it has been based on false or at least erroneous arguments.”

“The judges of the Fourth Division of the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg have reached their verdict without taking the reality into consideration. These judges have in fact stressed that they do not know what the politicians responsible for Itoiz have said again and again, and what everyone knows,” explained Beaumont.

The Strasbourg judges say they do not know the aim of the new National Parks Law passed by the Navarrese Parliament in 1996. “Those responsible for the reservoir admitted dozens of times, and with pride, too, that the change was made to the law so as not to comply with the verdict handed down by the Spanish National Criminal Court in 1995; that verdict and also the one handed down by the Spanish Supreme Court in 1997 regarded the Itoiz reservoir project as illegal.” Beaumont added that the Spanish National Criminal Court itself had admitted that the aim of the new law was to seek a way of not complying with the verdict handed down against the project, and that is what it explained, when it presented the case on that law to the Spanish Constitutional Court.

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In Artozki

More information about the resistance movement against the projected dam in Itoiz:

Resistance against the Itoiz dam continues in Artozki

Today, 22nd September, is the eighth day of resistance in the village of Artozki, to prevent its demolition to make way for the Itoiz dam. Despite a big scare on Friday, when four vans of riot police entered the village with rubber bullet guns and batons, the village is still standing and full of life.

Today, 22nd September, is the eighth day of resistance in the village of Artozki, to prevent its demolition to make way for the Itoiz dam. Despite a big scare on Friday, when four vans of riot police entered the village with rubber bullet guns and batons, the village is still standing and full of life.

Friday's police incursion was met with an impressive show of passive resistance, with people chained in concrete barrel lock-ons across the road, and people resisting on rooftops, tripods and locked on to the houses. They pushed and batonned the people they found in the square and violently moved the barrel road block with people still locked to it. After filming everyone the police finally agreed to talk to a mediator, told her they were just there to disconnect the electricity, and left. A generator arrived soon after, and Artozki still lives!

This weekend the town celebrated a week of resistance with a fiesta, with residents of the village and neighbours from the surrounding areas affected by the dam.

A week ago, when residents left their homes with tears in their eyes, no one could have imagined that the houses would still be standing and the village alive with festivities one week later. Around 250 people took part, with traditional Basque dancing, giant puppets, games and food, as well as debates and discussions about the dam project and the continuing resistance.

Around 80 people took part in the discussions, where the previous residents of the village made it clear that they have not voluntarily left. The six families who remained living in the village to the last were forcibly removed from their homes. They gave their support and thanks to the people who have stayed to defend the village and denounced the fact that they have spent 18 years living under the threat of the Dam.

Over the past week the current occupants of the village have been subjected to constant police harassment, with road blocks on the incoming roads, police incursions into the village and low flying helicopters buzzing us and filming the inhabitants (and exploding our straw puppets with the wind they create!)

At noon today, for example, a van of Navarran Policia Foral drove into the village square, and six riot police got out, waving rubber bullet guns and batons, wandered around the village and then left again. They are testing the level of resistance in the town and how quickly the defences can be activated.

We are still expecting them to try to evict any day now. We are not dropping our guard and we repeat the call to action - come help the resistance in Artozki!

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Evictions in Itoiz

Here you have an article that denounces what's going on in Itoiz:

Evictions for the filling of the Itoitz dam continue

Itoizekiko Solidariak, 2003-09-15 19:31

On Monday 15th September the second wave of evictions and demolitions will begin around the Itoiz Dam. Below is a communique from Solidari@s con Itoiz. For more information about the Itoiz Dam go to www.sositoiz.com, and keep watching Indymedia for news updates on the resitance that is taking place.

On September 15th the second wave of evictions and demolitions of towns affected by the Itoiz dam will begin. This time the villages sentenced to death are Artozki and Muniain. These villages, like those already destroyed, reflect a way of life enjoyed by our ancestors, based on respect for the natural environment upon which they depend. The destruction of these villages and the alternative proposed by the powers that be clearly represent the development model that they want to impose on us.

The beautiful houses, built stone upon stone, which have stood for centuries, will be replaced with concrete pre-fab bungalows for urban tourists. People will come from the cities to relieve their stress on golf courses fed from the waters of the Itoiz dam and built upon the ghostly remains of what was, in its day, a place full of life.

The fields, worked for many generations with natural compost, will be replaced by massive monoculture plantations on the Mediterranean coast - chemical fertilisers sucking the life from the land and the water, both privatised by agri-business multinationals.

The peaceful life that they breathed in these villages will become compulsive consumerism, stress and individualism. Gone the self-sufficiency, communial ties and respect for your fellow villagers and environment. In its place a violent and aggressive way of life which exploits people and increases inequalty and injustice in everything it touches. Of all that which once was they will save only a few vestiges, dissected remains to be shown to tourists in the ethnological museums - the only remaining testemony to a once vibrant way of life.

In Cancun the multinationals and powerful governments are conspiring, through the WTO, to sweep millions of small farmers and indigenous peoples from their path. These campesinos hold the key to the people's power to feed itself. They are a real barrier to global business whose sole concern is to increase the profits of the few, condemning millions to hunger. Likewise, in Navarra, the tyrannical neo-feudal government is destroying villages which are the guarentors of the people's right to produce its own food and to live in harmony with nature and without exploiting anyone.

The Spanish National Hydrological Plan, of which the Itoiz dam forms a part, will be the biggest ecological, economic and social disaster in the history of the Spanish State. It will exacerbate the already serious territorial imbalance, creating more depopulation of the interior areas, if that were possible. Meanwhile the coastal areas lose what little is left of their ways of life, to prostitute themselves to tourism and the urbanising plague which, little by little, is annhilating the essence of both people and places.

We are also fighting against the Itoiz dam because it is a death threat to the people who live down river. According to an internal document of the Confederación Hidrográfica del Ebro, geological subsidance and recent filtrations in the rocks make the failure of the dam a very real danger.

We demand life in the Irati valley, with development in harmony with nature and the peculiar way that woman, man and river have forged an existence here amidst the mountains for thousands of years. We are calling for a future for this valley without interferences, without impositions and without death sentences. So far this is all that we have received from theives such as the Urralburus, Aragones, Burgos, and Sanz, all of whom have clear intersts to be served by the dam and by the Navarra Canal. This latter infrastructure project does not justify the destruction in Itoiz, on the contrary, it will mean expoitation of Navarra for decades to come.

These private interests have bypassed everything and destroyed the hopes of the Irati valley to have a dignified future as part of Navarra. We cannot let them take this from us. This is why we are mobilising and we will keep mobilising until sanity wins over the concrete monstrosities and bottomless pockets.

We want to save the River Irati so that she always runs free. We want living villages and rivers, not skeletons and mummies.

NO MORE DEMOLITIONS
NO TO THE CLOSING OF THE ITOIZ DAM
DEFEND MOTHER EARTH
FREEDOM FOR IÑAKI

Solidari@s con Itoiz

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Defending Euskal Herria

In the mean time, the Basques have to defend their land from open attacks on their history and their natural resources, for those of you interested, see what is taking place in Itoiz and Irunea.

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